Monday is Constitution Day and a holiday. But most
Nepalis will mark it as a day of national mourning. The constitution has been in life support for three years now.
It is clinically dead.

Once described by its own framers as the "best in the world", the 1990 Constitution was a document that emerged from the unprecedented upheaval of the People's Movement. The hard right had lost its shady backdoor influence and was never happy about being sidelined. It has been plotting ever since to worm its way back .

As it turned out, the post-1990 elected national leadership obliged by making a mess of democracy and relentlessly insulting the constitution. And when the comrades went underground in 1996, the ultra-right found common cause with a force that hated pluralism as much as it did.

Since then, our democratic constitution has been dismantled bit by bit in front of our eyes by a feckless political leadership that couldn't see beyond the tip of its nose, by Mandale remnants desperate to ride again, by impatient rightwingers in the palace, and by the Maoists who wanted a shortcut to end it all. However much they shed crocodile tears now, they all had a hand in its demise.

To be sure, 1990 was an incomplete revolution. The constitution it spawned was not perfect, but no constitution is-they are supposed to evolve and mature. Some of the things the framers left intentionally ambiguous were the role of the monarchy, the degree of its Hinduness and the army's chain of command.

As in other constitutional monarchies, they left residual powers in the hands of the head of state with clauses like Article 127. But whatever its language, the preamble left no doubt about the spirit of the constitution: sovereignty rested with the people, the monarch was bound by constitutional norms.

Deep down, this is what the present stalemate is all about: How much (or little) power the king should really have and who should command the army. And it doesn't look like this is going to be resolved without a ruinous fight.
This Constitution Day let's ask ourselves: How much longer are we going to kill each other over something that could be resolved if leaders showed a little vision and statesmanship?

In the village of Tatopani in Jumla, a wizened man who looked a lot older than his 50 years, was telling us recently about how his community is trapped between the Maoists and the army when he broke down and wept. Sobbing, he asked, "When will the king talk to the Maoists, when all of us are dead?"